It was a Tuesday and so I headed to the Kitchener Farmers Market - what a blast (and hey, they have free parking!). It’s a permanent market with loads of ethnic food stalls from Caribbean to Mexican and Croatian lots of food made with local produce. It was lunchtime and I ended up wearing some of my chicken wrap on my shirt, but worth every bite.
Then off to Hurrley's Market just outside Kitchener where they promote local with their 100-Mile map of suppliers. What a great market, they preserve a lot of summer fruit in jars, how beautiful to see the fruit suspended in syrup. I bought some of their sweet cherries and couldn’t resist a cup of delicious strawberry sorbet, it was a hot day - yum!
By the time I got to Martin's Family Fruit Farm in St Jacobs I noticed a bit of pink sorbet on my shirt right next to the lunch stain- evidence of a great day. I met owner Steve Martin and had a great discussion about the cost of food. Martin’s sells premium apples as well as seconds because he believes that food should be affordable for everyone – good man.
Feel free to ask Steve any farming question and he's never shy to give you more than the answer you expected. They’re little store is filled with apples of all varieties. Martins is also an apple sorting facility so they have the freshest and best apples. Besides the apples, they have lots of other produce that they source from across the province. Picked up a few apples to eat in the car – I’m amazed that this is June and the apples are still so crunchy and fresh.
Got home and made dinner from the things I found – yummy sausage from Hurrley’s and fresh peppers from Martin’s – dessert was a bit of yogurt drowned in the most luscious sweet cherries in a not-so-sweet syrup. Country markets are never far from home and I love eating food from people I meet along the way.
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